Wild Trigger: Slot Overview

Ay caramba players – we’re riding into the frontier with a shoot ’em up-style slot from Play’n GO called Wild Trigger. The Old West was a rough-and-ready place, which explains the title, though that doesn’t mean it can’t deliver a few tongue-in-cheek moments. In Wild Trigger, “ironic” is probably the better fit. Here, two outlaws, Clint McGraw and Dottie Fields, have pulled off one of the biggest bank jobs the West has ever seen. The problem is, now that they’ve got the haul, neither wants to split it. To decide who keeps the spoils, the pair square off across the reels, backed by features like Walkdown Re-spins and Duel Free Spins.

When Wild Trigger boots up, birds wheel ominously overhead before the view drops onto a dusty, nowhere town straight out of a Western. Whatever you think of the gameplay, Play’n GO has created what has to be one of the most scorching-looking slots around. Not “hot” in the Paris Hilton sense, but hot as in temperature. Between the heat-haze shimmer, the sepia palette, and the constant grit in the air, the screen practically crackles when Wild Trigger fires up.

Right in the middle sits Wild Trigger’s 5×4 game panel, built with 20 paylines that generally pay left to right, but at times pay both ways. On the reel frame, helpful arrows indicate which direction is currently active. It’s arguably a bit much since the both-ways setup only kicks in during respins or free spins, but it’s still a nice touch. Rated as a medium volatile title, Wild Trigger’s best return to player option is the 96.2% version, and it supports a broad betting spread from 2 p/c per spin up to a maximum of $/€100.

Checking the paytable, the lower tier is made up of 10-A symbols, which return 5-7.5x the bet for a five-symbol line. Above them are bourbon bottles, hats’ n boots, pistols, dynamite, and sacks of gold, paying 12.5 to 50 times the stake for five of a kind. Two wild symbols also appear on the reels, substituting for all symbols, and they play a central role in Wild Trigger’s features.

Wild Trigger: Slot Features

Wilds show up on reels 1 and/or 5 only and always land stacked, filling every position on whichever reel they hit. Landing 1 of them activates a Walkdown Respin where the wild becomes sticky, and the paylines switch to paying both ways. If both of the wilds land together, you trigger 10 Duel Free Spins. Throughout the entire free spins bonus, both wilds are sticky, and the reel set pays both ways.

Wild Trigger: Slot Verdict

Wild Trigger is set in one of the most barren backdrops you’ll find in an online Western slot. The shimmering heat, the dust, the standoff between two ex-partners, the buzzards – it all paints a grim picture. That said, it’s a bit of misdirection, because once you dig into how it plays, Wild Trigger is actually one of the more “gentle” Westerns we’ve seen lately. That doesn’t automatically make it a poor slot, but if you’re chasing something truly iconic, you probably won’t find it out here, muchacho.

The main reason is that while plenty of studios are loading their Western slots with the biggest firepower possible, Wild Trigger is clearly targeting a different sort of gunslinger. It seems aimed at players who prefer their Western action more relaxed and aren’t overly concerned with hunting the largest prizes available. If that sounds like you, Wild Trigger may fit the bill. In fact, its feel is fairly close to a Red Tiger rap slot, Hustling. Both games use the pay both ways approach with wilds on the outer reels, though Wild Trigger is the more straightforward of the two. It’s also not a huge earner, with a top payout capped at 2,000x the bet. Not exactly the kind of loot you’d expect to double-cross a partner for.

There isn’t much more to add. Wild Trigger doesn’t come out firing on all cylinders, and it never really shifts into that mode. The feature set is fairly thin, with sticky wilds doing most of the heavy lifting, so the gameplay can start to feel repetitive over time. If the wilds moved during respins, or if a multiplier mechanic appeared at some stage, or really anything extra, it might have been easier for the game to kick up a notch. The 2c stake option is a plus, but it’s almost like the on-screen heat has seeped into the design, leaving Wild Trigger a little too sluggish to shake off.